SARD

Safety and Assurance Requirements Division

The Safety and Assurance Requirements Division monitors, anticipates, promotes, and actively maintains and improves the health of Safety and Mission Assurance discipline areas.

Who We Are

The Safety and Assurance Requirements Division consists of Safety and Mission Assurance discipline experts within the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance tasked with providing the agency with policy and technical guidance and advice.

What We Do

The Safety and Assurance Requirements Division (SARD) ensures that

Directives, standards and related guidance are clear, current and consistent across disciplines

Adequate knowledge, tools, methods and facilities are available to address current and future test, experiment and analysis needs

Resources exist to ensure the competence and promote technical excellence of personnel

Stakeholders are properly informed about matters related to the discipline

Effective insight, oversight and assurance of center-level activities are in place

Effective support of institution and program-level activities and cross-center collaborations are in place

Technical objectives and requirements are routinely satisfied by programs and institutions

Mission

The Safety and Assurance Requirements Division (SARD) fosters and continually advances the state of NASA’s Safety and Mission Assurance through the development and promulgation of policy, standards, guidance, technical knowledge and capabilities.

Vision

It is SARD’s vision to bring about the necessary conditions to ensure that NASA programs and institutions consider safety and mission success in an active, integrated and cost-effective manner through recognized and mission-oriented technical leadership, collaboration, and an objectives-driven and risk-informed mindset.

Deirdre Healey

Deirdre Healey

Mission Support Division Director

Deirdre Healey is the director of the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) Mission Support Division at NASA Headquarters. In this position, she leads Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) activities in support of NASA's spacecraft (including the International Space Station and space hardware developed for exploration programs and commercial space activities), science payloads, expendable launch vehicles and aeronautics programs. In addition, she provides OSMA’s primary interface with the NASA mission directorates, the Office of the Chief Technologist and the center SMA organizations.

Previously, Healey supported SMA activities for the Human Exploration and Operations Exploration Systems Directorate where she led efforts to incorporate SMA policies and tenets into the agency’s various human space flight programs including Orion, the Space Launch System and the new Commercial Crew Program.

Healey has more than 26 years of experience in space systems SMA, program management, engineering, operations and policy. Prior to joining NASA, she led development and operations of national and international space systems in the U.S. Air Force. She held various roles including program manager for the Inertial Upper Stage Rocket Booster Program, director of Titan Program Operations and Integration, deputy program manager for Launch Projects at Cape Canaveral Air Station, chief of the International Policy Branch for United States Strategic Command, and technical director for requirements at the Air Force Satellite Control Network. In addition, she served on various Mishap Investigation Boards including the president-commissioned Launch Broad Area Review and the Titan IVA-20 Accident Investigation Board.

Healey has a master's degree in government from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois.

Frank J. Groen

Frank J. Groen

Safety and Assurance Requirements Division Director

Dr. Frank J. Groen is the director of the Safety and Assurance Requirements Division within NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA). In this role, Groen is responsible for the development and maintenance of NASA directives and standards pertaining to Safety and Mission Assurance, as well as related methods, tools and guidance.

Prior to his current position, Groen worked in OSMA as the manager for Reliability and Maintainability (R&M), and also served as the document manager for NASA’s Human Rating Directive and program executive for NASA’s Expendable Launch Vehicle Payload Safety Program. During this period, he introduced the safety goal policy for human spaceflight missions to the Human-Rating Directive, oversaw the development of an accident precursor analysis methodology for NASA and initiated an objectives-driven approach for the standardization of R&M activities.

Before joining NASA, Groen was active in academia and industry, where he focused on method and tool development in the field of reliability and risk assessment, with a focus on Bayesian data analysis, accident scenario modeling and analysis, and Monte Carlo simulation. He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in reliability engineering from the University of Maryland in 2000 and a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands.

Terrence W. Wilcutt

Terrence W. Wilcutt

CHIEF, SAFETY AND MISSION ASSURANCE

Terrence W. Wilcutt is NASA's chief of Safety and Mission Assurance. Appointed to this role in September 2011, Wilcutt is responsible for the development, implementation and oversight of all Safety and Mission Assurance policies and procedures for all NASA programs.

Wilcutt is a retired Marine colonel and veteran astronaut who previously served as director of Safety and Mission Assurance at NASA's Johnson Space Center from 2008 to 2011. In that position, Wilcutt was tasked with the Safety Technical Authority of the programs and projects at Johnson, as well as the center's Institutional Safety program.

Wilcutt joined NASA in 1990 as an astronaut candidate and was accepted into the corps in 1991. He logged more than 1,007 hours in space as the pilot on two shuttle missions, STS-68 in 1994 and STS-79 in 1996, and commander of two others, STS-89 in 1998 and STS-106 in 2000. His technical assignments as an astronaut included work on space shuttle main engine and external tank issues; supporting shuttle launches and landings as a member of the astronaut support personnel team at Kennedy Space Center; and technical issues for the Astronaut Office Operations Development Branch at Johnson.

Wilcutt also served as NASA director of operations at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia; and at Johnson as chief of the Astronaut Office Shuttle Operations Branch, manager of Safety and Mission Assurance for the Space Shuttle Program, and deputy director of Safety and Mission Assurance.

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Wilcutt earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in math from Western Kentucky University in 1974. He taught high school math for two years before entering the Marine Corps in 1976 and earned his naval aviator wings in 1978.

From 1980 until 1983, he was stationed in Kaneohe, Hawaii, and flew F-4 Phantoms during two overseas deployments to Japan, Korea and the Philippines. For the next three years, he served as an F/A-18 fighter weapons and air combat maneuvering instructor while assigned to Squadron VFA-125 at Lemoore Naval Air Station in California. From 1986 until his selection by NASA, Wilcutt attended the United States Naval Test Pilot School and served as a test pilot and project officer for the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate of the Naval Aircraft Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, flying the F/A-18 Hornet, the A-7 Corsair II, the F-4 Phantom and other aircraft. He has more than 6,600 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft.

Wilcutt has received numerous special honors, including NASA's Outstanding Leadership Medal, Distinguished Service Medal, Exceptional Service Medal and four space flight medals; the Distinguished Flying Cross; the Defense Superior Service and Meritorious Service medals; and the Navy Commendation Medal. He also has received the American Astronautical Society Flight Achievement Award; the V.M. Komarov Diploma, Federation Aeronautique Internationale space award for outstanding achievements in space exploration; and distinguished alumnus recognition and an honorary doctorate degree from Western Kentucky University.